1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for storage management, and more particularly to distributed storage management.
2. Discussion of Background Art
Enterprises which manage substantial inventories, such as retail stores, warehouses, libraries, package delivery firms, as well as many other businesses, often follow standard business processes for managing storage of such inventories. Such processes rely on a large number of individuals who manually locate and identify all of the assets and infrastructure to be inventoried. Such manual processes, even though often augmented with computerized bar code scanners, are fraught with error. Usually gaps remain after such inventorying since not all assets are either found, counted correctly, and/or scanned. For example, due to such inaccurate processes, in many stores, an incredible number of sales are lost due to empty shelves even though the product is available in the back room, or could have been previously ordered from a supplier. There typically has not been a way to monitor the number of products on a shelf without someone having been physically there.
xe2x80x9cSmart-shelvesxe2x80x9d is a phrase coined by industry covering various attempts to increase the accuracy of inventory monitoring and reduce its costs. Smart-shelves employ a system of product tags on products and tag reader devices, connected to a central computer system which monitors the products on a shelf.
The product tags are typically a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag affixed to a product. FIG. 1 is a pictorial diagram 100 of a typical Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag 102. The RFID tag 102 typically includes an inductive antenna 104 and a computer chip 106. RFID tags typically contain product model number and serial number identification information, which may or may not conform to an electronic Product Code (e-PC) protocol format. Currently, RFID tags are commonly used as anti-theft devices in retail stores.
Central computer systems, however, are inundated by the large amounts of data collected by the tag reader devices. Such systems require substantial, and expensive, central computer processing power, yet still operate very slowly, with a high data latency. For example, retail store having thousands of products, require the central computer to individually poll each product""s tag for product information in a very piecemeal manner.
In response to the concerns discussed above, what is needed is a system and method for storage management that overcomes the problems of the prior art.
The present invention is a system and method for distributed storage management. The system of the present invention includes: an item storage device, including a set of items: an item identification module, for collecting raw data from the set of items located within the item storage device; a processing module, proximate to the item storage device, for summarizing a predetermined subset of the raw data; a memory module, for storing selected system data; and a communications module, for transmitting the summarized data.
The method of the present invention includes: collecting raw data from a set of items located within an item storage device; summarizing a predetermined subset of the raw data with a processing module proximate to the item storage device; storing selected system data; and transmitting the summarized data.
These and other aspects of the invention will be recognized by those skilled in the art upon review of the detailed description, drawings, and claims set forth below.